well as settlers, averaged 12,340; and visitors, including
'passengers' as well as ships' crews, averaged 11,876; or excluding
male hangers-on from the one side and passengers from the other side,
residents averaged 5,660 and visitors 5,435. Figures no longer yielded
an uncertain sound. The Rubicon was only just crossed, but was
indisputably and irrevocably crossed. Thenceforth the living-rooms
were larger than the corridors, and political arithmetic pointed at
the permanent occupants as the men of destiny. In 1764 the new tilt of
the balance struck the law officers of the Crown, who wrote that it
was 'disgraceful to suffer' the Act of 1699 'to remain in the Statute
Book' as circumstances had so much changed. This disproportion
increased; and the 12,000 inhabitants of 1764-74 swelled to 17,000 in
1792, 20,000 in 1804, and 52,000 in 1822, without any corresponding
increase on the part of those who appeared every spring and faded away
every autumn, like leaves or flowers."[33]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Quoted in Egerton's "History of British Colonial Policy."

[31] But see the end of the present chapter in regard to the character
and fluctuations of the population.

[32] For example, in 1745, 1746, 1757.

[33] Rogers, _op. cit._, pp. 122-123, 137-138.